I’d say you’ll need to watch the Unico movie to get what’s going on here, but these are all the broad strokes
May 14, 2018
5:23 am
In the effort to find something to make jokes about that isn’t already a picked carcass in the internet Wasteland, I watched the Unico the Unicorn movie.
Ah, commander less stereotyping? That’s not what space future command want from you. To get back into their good books you need to spend less time with your kids and start some proper brooding.
I love your work.
Careful, this might give him ideas. Like going to some Zerg Brood and teaching them about proper table manners and responsibilities of being adults instead of shooting them. Soon you’ll have an entire civilization of intellectual and hard working Zergs.
“What do you mean this isn’t what Brooding means?”
That would be hilariously amazing. A bunch of Zerg in top hats and eye glasses drinking tea all civilized.
They may attack in unending swarms and eat you alive but at least they would do so politely.
“Sorry about my eating your face there good sir. Terribly inconvenient for you I’m sure but a zerg got to eat you know?”
And the Military Command would be FURIOUS
“How dare you! HOW DARE YOU CIVILIZE THE BUGS WE’VE BEEN USING AS A FEAR SOURCE! How are we supposed to shoot them and look good while they are so damn nice and polite and hard-working. WHY MUST YOU RUIN EVERYTHING WITH YOUR SENSIBILITY!?”
Incensed and in Sensibility. That’s a book I would read.
I don’t know…. Knowing his superior officers they’d probably use it as an excuse to turn the Zerg into a hoard of Steampunk cyborgs or something…
I mean just imagine the Zerg over-mind with a sophisticated English accent…
“Sorry old chap, but I’m afraid the game is up… With our new brass plated armor my zerglings are now unstoppable. I know this might sting a tiny bit, but I think it would be best if you just lay back and join us.”
Nah. They’ve got good damage control via propaganda.
“Bugs: can they be civilized!? Studies stamp a definite NO!
>Want to know more?”
FRANKLY I FIND THE IDEA OF A CLASSY BUG INSULTING.
I get the feeling for some reason they all inexplicably sound like John “TotalBiscuit” Bain.
Rest In Peace.
OMG! This is all I want to see now!
I see only one flaw in this amazing plan. Which is the fact that bugs are his one weakness.
But his daughter *loves* them. In fact, he probably did this for her.
In fact it probably was future!June who civilised the Zerg.
Wait… Future June ends up becoming the queen of the Zerg?
Future June becomes the therapist of the Zerg.
The Queen of Healthy Social Interaction
He don’t hate bugs in general he hates Milipedes, he has never expressed any animosity towards beetles, flies, ants and the like, so seeing as few Zergs are Milipedes, like Commander civilizing them remains possible.
To be fair, it wasn’t even animosity. As long as they stay way over there… and don’t touch him or his stuff… he’ll leave them be too.
As much as I love this idea, Zergs are canonically made to be only able to act within a hive mind, except for the highest level of Zergs who are given enough neural mass to make them able to think for themselves… and even then they don’t like it when they have to step out of the hive.
Wouldn’t this make it easier for the Commander? Just drill the lessons into the Hivemind and all the subsequent Zergs would be born with his lessons imprinted into them on genetic level.
I don’t know… the last time people from Earth tried to enslave the Overmind, it didn’t work out so great.
But he wouldn’t try to enslave them, just civilize them. He would just talk it out with the zerg overmind and the overmind would be all like “my sister bullied me when I was a kid and my parents liked her more than me and they named the dog Only Son.”
…..Waitaminute. I happen to check this place on a whim, and there isn’t a single comment whatsoever?
….Wonder if I can find where they store their stuff before people start showing up.
I love that the Commander isn’t down for stereotyping anybody. Even bishounen.
That’s why commander’s perfect to reform so many video game protagonists.
Real men aren’t just tough, but also smart and civilized. Yet so many who try to ‘be manly’ just manage to get 1 out of 3 and think that’s enough.
Especially bishounen… Especially after that whole thing with the Namura syndrome….
I loved the Nomura callback in this comic.
I mean, one of his buds is (was?) a natural bishie.
Even if he had been reduced to a head, spine, fabulous hair and fully customized synthetic body.
Damn right, Commander doesn’t judge people based on their looks! Bishies are people too! Just barely, mind you, but the point stands!
The second one’s marginally more straightforward, but I can’t remember if it just drops you in medias res or if it explains the backstory any before starting his next adventure
Y’know, I specifically avoid turning into a big grody demon during fights just because I don’t want to uphold the stereotype.
Naturally the one time I let it happen, everyone acts like it’s regular for me and keep bringing it up years after the fact.
why we never get to see him kiss another man with all his gay adventures?
Kuz him and Jonesy might not be serious but he don’t cheat? I guess?
and he still works as a stripper or worse. Plus the fact that he asked her to not let him near one of the daddies before and she just chuckled about it.
Idk, perhaps we’ll see that in a future exploration of Tank’s character, though the one time that relationship was addressed it was vaguely implied that there wasn’t really anything sexual there, just… mechanical.
It’s implied pretty heavily that it was a full committed sexual and romantic relationship until Tank’s abuse ended it. When they had that reunion talk in the snowy park a while back, it sounded like they’d been living together and discussing marriage (unless I read it wrong, which is totally possible.) Given the way Commander is with his romantic partners, I’d guess it was the whole deal and it was loving and committed and uplifting and all of that until Tank ruined it.
Hahah, yeah, Tank and Rock were 100% sleeping with each other. Rock was caught in a bad place between “addicted to commitment” and “putting everything he wanted on hold to devote himself to an unsustainable relationship” because he makes bad romantic choices.
It hasn’t really had an opportunity to come up in the comic but here’s a little sketch from my tumblr
really BIG thanks for that )
This was a quality call back.
Great callback. I can’t see Commander swearing around his kids though; he seems more protective than that, and holds himself to high standards.
The Commander is all about respect but reactions towards swearing depend on your values. Maybe he doesn’t consider it a big deal (as long as he isn’t using a slur) until others act offended and then he curbs his inclinations around those people because he’s smart enough to pick his battles. I’m sure he’s polite enough to consider their feelings too unless they get very rude and insistent about censoring him. And maybe he’s explained that to his kids. The little girl might be old enough to grasp that concept.
What’s the point of not swearing if everyone around you swears constantly?
Punctuation?
Wait, what was the swearing? Did it get changed since it was first put up?
Is he swearing here? I re-read and I can’t find any swear.
Well, I imagine “she was being a dick” counts
Besides, we’re not sure whether or not this is his final form. He might be a one pump chump.
I love the Unico Movie, but it is a complete mind screw. This whole thing is because the Gods are jerks and ticked off that Unico is really good at making people happy.
Holy hell, I haven’t seen that movie since I was a kid.
This is an actual movie? I thought it was made up for the purposes of this strip!
Hahaha! It definitely rambles. I bought it for nostalgia and watched it with my nieces (4 & 6). They lost interest pretty quickly and said it was too long and confusing. I prefer the 2nd movie to the 1st anyway.
Unico 2 is somehow, to me, even more batshit wacky.
There’s a Unico 2? Wellp, better got find that.
Unico and the Magic Island.
As far as I’m concerned the big bad of that movie is one of the best villains in animation history.
The tl;dr of the plot, spoiler-free version: The Big Bad is turning people into figures built of legos that must do as he commands.
Unico is pretty much always, always gonna be weird, plotwise.
Unico 2 is Animist Metaphysics For Kids at its most surreal. Imagine if a toy you misused as a kid came back to get revenge on the whole human race! Japanese traditionally never throw anything remotely still useful away until it has been completely worn out,so every other attic has a betamax VCR sitting around, or some such. If they haven’t thoroughly worn a tool or toy out by the time it’s obsolete, it just languishes, forgotten in storage. Well, that’s better then being junked before your time. Maybe a novelty collector will buy it one day…
Not the one’s in cities. They don’t have the space for keeping everything. Out int he towns and such? Oh yeah…they keep it till it is unusable…and even THEN they might repurpose it to still be useful a little longer.
As secular as the Japanese seem to be on the surface, the underlying archetypical psychology of Shintoism is still very strong everywhere. I bet most big city people try to donate their old stuff to charity as much as possible, whatever passes for “Goodwill” over there, and it’s as much about being kind to the tools as it is kindness to people!
RE: In the effort to find something to make jokes about that isn’t already a picked carcass in the internet Wasteland, I watched the Unico the Unicorn movie.
You don’t have to fall on your sword for us.
;)
The demon animation at the end is pretty impressive though for how old it is.
Unico was created by the same person as Astro Boy. Osamu Tezuka (The Walt Disney of Anime)
Unico in the Island of Magic is still one of the most terrifying kids movies.
No kidding, right? I got hit by a nostalgia bomb from this comic, and started watching Island of Magic last night. It has some cheesy elements but damn if the villain doesn’t still stand out as super creepy!
<3 Unico!
I barely remember the first Unico movie, but I still get shivers thinking about the second one.
Jared’s face is fantastic. He looks so much more mature and confident. It just…really stands out to me.
Finally, someone else knows this movie!
Hour and a half. Eh, still less a time sink than linking TVTropes.
You only end up losing 3-6 hours of your life if you have not been properly trained to handle TVTropes. There are methods to learning this control, but they are taxing and may take years.
So…3-6 hours lost on occasion and a large collection of near-useless trivia, or years of taxing training and nothing to show for it except the ability to avoid the former? I know which option I’ll choose.
Plus, if you just keep reading long enough you’ll eventually read all of it and you’ll never need to click a link again. Right? Right???
Nope, you will be bound to forget something.
But.. but.. but…. they pretty do all do that!
No, that’s just Gackt. The many, many forms of Gackt.
…wait a tic, is Gackt secretly Nyarlothotep?
No, no, Nyarlothotep is actually a silver haired teenage girl who’s a top-ranking graduate of the Space Defense Agency. She’s pretty weird but still entertaining, and very cute.
Whoops, forgot to link to the main page not just the character bio.
Jarred looks strangely handsome in that panel . . .
Panel 1, Balloon 3: “But she was bein’ a dick so her turned her back.”
her –> he (?)
Panel 1, Balloon 4: “Then th’ old lady was sad or drownin’ or whatever so her turned he turned her BACK back.”
…whatever so
her turnedhe turned her BACK back. (?)Oh good, someone else noticed
I interpreted that as portraying the Commander’s confusion over what was going on.
Yeah, I have NFI what this comic is on about, largely from those two sentences.
The research you have to do for this comic, just to get one punchline is amazing.
Ha ha or just be old enough to have seen the movie before. I haven’t seen it in years but I sort of remember it (plus it helps I’ve looked it up before, trying to figure out what the hell I watched as a kid.) XD
the first one’s actually on crunchyroll now. checked it out on a whim a month ago or so which cracks me up as it was apparently quite fortuitous timing.
Jared looking mighty strong jawed and almost even heroic in the panel he is in.
Wild.
Hah that plot (in your comic, I haven’t seen this movie you’re talking about) was great. A+ callback.
T’ be fair, a lotta Tezuka stories are like this. Kimba the White Lion has a heck of a swerve at the end.
Jared’s Chin is widening. Commander is beginning to rub off on him.
It’s also cool commander is teaching Jared to keep his budding manliness towards true manliness instead of letting it slip into the bro-douche fake-manly path by nipping undeserved hostility before it starts to bud. Commander knows real men save their insults and derogation for those who deserve it, and stereotyping is only a good way to have fewer allies which is a total fail by any real man.
Also, if you notice, he is slowly starting to grow stubble.
I mean, it might just be stubble, but I recall him going ‘no! I’ve been growing that beard since I was fourteen!!’ back when Gackt infected the Manly Guys Agency with the Bishounen Virus, and now it’s back and stubbley even faster.
…’Gackt infected the Manly Guys Agency with the Bishounen Virus’. That is a statement. That actually can be typed.
…the world we live in is truly amazing.
(I mean, logically, it’s just his character design, but it’s still a fun idea to claim that he’s slowly ascending from the rank of Manly Guy Agency Intern. Also See: That time he got a job as a night guard at a family restaurant)
Well, grow /more/ stubble. He’s getting a stubblestache instead of just his chin fuzz.
I just realized, I really want to see my favorite burly man ever featured on this story with the rest; Magnus Burnsides.
Magnus Burnsides doesn’t need any help integrating into society at all though, he has rustic hospitality and a promising career as a carpenter.
Have you ever thought about Commander meeting some of the clone troopers from Star Wars? They seem like the sort of clientele his agency would be helping, what with the space war PTSD and mind control chips that made them kill their friends and all.
Or do they not meet the minimum pectoral girth?
Huh…. I could have sworn you were describing The Last Unicorn before you got into turned back back. Unico, that’s a Tezuka propriety right?
… wait this is a real Movie? … oh man O.o
i just can’t believe someone else remembers a Unico movie! I seriously used to think Unico and the Island of Magic was just a fever dream I had as a kid, bt then I found it on youtube in all it’s creepy ass glory. Those movies were so damn creepy as a kid. hell, they’re kinda creepy now.
…but Unico and the Island of Magic is at least a more coherent story than the first one shown in the comic. Apparently there was actually actually one made before the two more well know ones. haven’t been able to find it but its supposed to be really depressing.
Seriously though if ya thought this one was weird just check out the sequel. A “wizard” (i’m using that pretty broadly cuz he’s really more of a balloon with a face and an incredibly shrill voice) turns people into puppets and Unico and some girl stop him with friendship. sounds harmless but it seriously gave me nightmares and then i couldn’t figure out what the hell it was for 30 years untill i stubled upon a year ago. shoupd still be on youtube in its entirety.
I didn’t see the first until several years ago, but I remember growing up with the first Unico. The villain and his minions messed my dreams up as a kid. Even as an adult I got to give them credit for making over sized toys actually seem menacing to a kid. Reading the summaries of that series as a manga before the anime, it’s surprisingly dark when you think about it past the cute surface.
No ability to edit, that should be “The second film”, which is “The Island of Magic”
at this point I am wondering more about what the commander has not done than what he has
I gotta say, whenever Rock says a line like “I don’t wanna hear that stereotyping,” it makes my week.
Podcasts are usually interesting. Yesterday’s was more interesting than most, and reminded me of Jonesy and Commander in a way.
I’m not sure if you’ve heard of Bowling Alone, but it’s the basis, here. The idea behind BA is that the US is becoming more isolated. The BA writer spent upwards of 300 pages and charts to show us this was the case. Now, this was before Social Media, but that is another discussion (and might be why SocMed took off as forcefully; a kind of starvation).
Anyhow. With isolation came changes to marriage. Now if we look at Ye Olden Days, guy had some kids, gal had some kids, both from previous marriages. They hooked up and took care of the kids. No fuss, no muss. With isolation, the theory put forward is that our spouse becomes a Swiss Army Knife of sorts. Main source/responsibility for all social interaction, main bff, main everything.
There are upsides and downsides to that. A spouse, ideally, should be someone who you can imagine yourself having a great conversation with, and enjoying it, in 20 years. You should be friends, and more.
…but sometimes, maybe they get along and value one another, and just want t’raise kids. Or maybe we’re to a point of having to expect too much, and the stress on a marriage then, is more than it should be.
Anyhow, it reminds me some of those two.
Addendum: If you want to go into a Research Black Hole (those are awesome!), then google Bowling Alone and Social Media.
Makes me think that newer marriages may show a…may look very different, socially than just 5 years ago. I mean, okay. You may have your husband on your Instagram, but what about your other online social groups? How does that work?
I mean, that seems like it’s the new conversation. (Have our other conversations about marriage/relationships updated, tho?)
Where would Jonesy and Commander fit into that spectrum?
Glancing through that Unico movie triggers some strong familiarity and nostalgia. I’m not sure if I watched it (a lot) as a kid, or if it is just so similar to a lot of movies coming out at the time. Watching it is like having a word just on the tip of your tongue for two hours.
Okay, I am interested in this movie now.
Does commander still have that free punch on the admiral
Possible typo. First panel, third bubble section “…so her turned her back.” probably should be “he turned”?
That movie used to scare the living sh** out of me when I was like 8…. And the 2nd one with the wizard that turns everyone into blocks for his castle…
Speaking as a beautiful man that occasionally tries to kill heroic people but never, ever turns into a demon, can confirm.
I mean…technically at the time, the commander was a bishonen at the time as well. You gotta be more fair Jared.
I have NO idea what Commander is saying in that first panel. Seriously.
I honestly thought I had dreamed Unico for years. For a decade or so there, no one knew what the fuck I was talking about when I tried to describe it online.
Unico is my favorite childhood nightmare. The Brutality! The Cuteness! The Psychological Tourture! I loved it.
I saw both movies on the Disney child as a little, leeeeeeeeeeettle kid and never heard of them again. For years I thought they watching them was something I hallucinated…like, my mind didn’t have the processing power to fully dream this weirdness, so I could only dream of watching it on my TV.
Until one day, looking through a bin of bootleg vhs tapes at a comic convention, I saw it…them…both of these movies, these memories I had been calling “Lies” to myself for YEARS, were real.
So thanks! Every time someone reminds me Unico exists, gives me a small twinge of that feeling of certainty and vindication that rushed at me all at once smack dab in the middle of my adolescence.
sometimes i forget about that bishounen arc from way back when.
When the hell did Jared get that jawline?!
He’s been working out, man!
Come on, Commander! You know you can’t prove a negative. Just because the pretty boy hasn’t turned into a demon yet doesn’t mean he definitely won’t in the future. And even if he never does, it doesn’t mean he couldn’t if he wanted to.
So I watched this with my kids for a laugh, and then ended up sounding almost exactly like Rock while trying to explain the plot to my husband. Accurate parent is accurate.
I can’t get over this strip. It sums up everything that is weird (in a good way) about this comic and I simultaneously love it dearly, and know that I can’t send it to any of my friends because they won’t get it.
I’ve just realised there’s a wood pattern behind the comics.
Why does jarred look so much more…manly?
Aww, Unico… Been having feels for those movies lately ever since I stumbled on a very old pic of Taliesin Jaffe in cosplay as Toby from the second film. Old Sanrio cartoons were strange and dark and amazing…
Oh man, I love Unico!
I’ve only read the manga, though I’ve heard enough about the movie to keep up with this.
That ending devil was the epitome of creepy… and drugging her wine on to of that… wow
The second Unico movie was friggin’ creepy. Just look up Lord Kurukku.